I'm using the preview and there are nice improvements regarding charts in Excel. I never tried on 7, but it works on it, I know that much. It is still in it's preview form so you might as well give it a try.

Biggest improvements that I've noticed are with Excel, although I'm not 100% sure some of the features weren't available in 2010. Some of the quick-formatting options and auto-correction of functions are really nice when I'm moving stuff around. And yeah, the SkyDrive integration is awesome.

Hopefully there will be a family license or a 3-pack license. I'm not really into the subscription model -- I'd rather just purchase it outright and have the damn license for as long as I need it.

Biggest improvements that I've noticed are with Excel, although I'm not 100% sure some of the features weren't available in 2010. Some of the quick-formatting options and auto-correction of functions are really nice when I'm moving stuff around. And yeah, the SkyDrive integration is awesome.

Hopefully there will be a family license or a 3-pack license. I'm not really into the subscription model -- I'd rather just purchase it outright and have the damn license for as long as I need it.

I can remember out of hand if there will be a 3-pack, however standalone licenses will be available for purchase. I do remember the pricing is pushing you towards the subscription model though. I'm pretty sure Ars had an article on that a while back.

I've been using work and I find the usability when inserting images to be better too, not that there are new options, but I find it easier to manage images. It still feels like the ribbon interface is optimized for a 4:3 aspect ration. Can we please have an option to put it on the side, it would give us more vertical real estate. Yeah, I know you can hide the ribbon, but when you need to use it it still pops back up. It's a very minor thing, not at the level of an annoyance, but it still would be nice.

Interesting, didn't know since I don't use outlook, but I'd guess it has to do with completely removing the start menu from Windows 8.

No, because you can search exactly like in Windows 7. Press the Windows key and start typing.

Actually, this is probably right on the money since the Windows 8 search doesn't search a program's indexed content. It's the same for OneNote or IE.

Anyway, one thing that was FINALLY added in 2013 was basic table sorting in OneNote. Outlook has Exchange ActiveSync support so you don't need the Hotmail Connect for Outlook to connect to a Hotmail/Microsoft account (and task sync is supported). I haven't played around with how EAS policies (requires passwords, sync policies, remote wipe) affect Outlook. Word and PowerPoint have a nifty jump-back-to-where-you-were feature when opening the last file you worked on. Access got a web app, although I haven't played around with it all.

Office 2013 seems ok to me so far, used the HUP to get it. I have been trying to decide why the interface has been bugging me...normally I'm a fan of simplistic interfaces that don't get in your way or distract. I think I found out what it was though - in Excel for example, the border between the cells and the ribbon are no different than those between the cells. It all feels like it blends together. There's a bigger border in OneNote, but Word has a barely-there border as well. Hopefully it'll grow on me with time, I haven't really used any of the new features yet.

How is a person supposed to see their full agenda (say two-weeks worth) in Outlook 2013?

The To-Do Bar can be enabled (but it's off by default), but the best you get is a calendar which shows you your agenda on a per-day basis. So if you wish to see more than your current day, you have to manually click through each day on the calendar - one-by-one. Meanwhile you're starring at blank white space. The best you can get to any sort of "agenda view" is switching to the almost-hidden Outlook Today, but that's a real clutch. I gave up and went back to 2010 because this completely killed my workflow.

By contrast, in Outlook 2010, it fills the To-Do Bar with as many agenda items as possible (in 2007 it was a set amount that you could adjust for as many or as little agenda items as you want) so I can always see what I need to do next, usually for an entire week or more, whenever I look at my e-mail.

PDF is an end-of-work presentation format. As much as you can, you work in another app and export it to PDF. PDF isn't designed to be edited, it's designed to be the last format.

Well, "designed for" and "used for" are two different things, eh? People send me PDF forms (non-fillable!) all the time.-----------Can anyone on Windows 7 confirm that OneNote 2013 has pinch-zoom? I was disappointed that OneNote 2010 didn't have it(after "touch" was clearly one of its marketed features). Excel, Word, and PowerPoint 2010 all had pinch-zoom, but the one Office product (OneNote, a glorified text editor with an expandable view) that actually needed it was left in the dust.

I got Office 2013 via HUP, and so far have only used Outlook. I don't care for the appearance of Outlook at all. Your choice of "theme" is either light gray, or gray. Gee, thanks Microsoft.

I have no intention of storing ANY of my email/docs on Microsoft servers, so have not created a cloud account. I have seen nothing up front from Microsoft, about security and encryption configuration for their cloud services.

How is a person supposed to see their full agenda (say two-weeks worth) in Outlook 2013?

The To-Do Bar can be enabled (but it's off by default), but the best you get is a calendar which shows you your agenda on a per-day basis. So if you wish to see more than your current day, you have to manually click through each day on the calendar - one-by-one. Meanwhile you're starring at blank white space. The best you can get to any sort of "agenda view" is switching to the almost-hidden Outlook Today, but that's a real clutch. I gave up and went back to 2010 because this completely killed my workflow.

By contrast, in Outlook 2010, it fills the To-Do Bar with as many agenda items as possible (in 2007 it was a set amount that you could adjust for as many or as little agenda items as you want) so I can always see what I need to do next, usually for an entire week or more, whenever I look at my e-mail.

That really annoys me too! There are also several complaints since Preview in the Microsoft forums, but the only response is “it’s by design and can’t be changed easily” so I don’t have much hope they’ll fix it anytime soon. I also switched back to Outlook 2010 to get the, for me, most important feature back: everything at a glance.

You can finally have more than one Excel window open at a time. That's been long overdue and motivated me to do the upgrade.

I bought Office through HUP, but the installation fails with the following error:

---------------------------Couldn't install---------------------------We're sorry, we can't continue because we weren't able to download a required file. Please make sure you're connected to the internet or connect to a different network, then try again.---------------------------

Google leads to a hotfix that is supposed to repair this, but did not work for me.

I've been using 2013 for about 3 weeks now (version 15.0.4420.1017), on a Windows 8 laptop.These are the problems that I've had until now:

General Office windows:- using the "auto-hide ribbon" option, maximizing/restoring the windows auto-disables this setting.- all applications now start by default with a very nice, annoying and (until now) impossible to remove "Recent screen). When I open Excel or Word, I'd like to be able to start typing immediately, without clicking on a template or pressing Esc.

Outlook:- since the interface is now "optimized" for touch devices, the emails in the email list are bigger. Hence, on my portable, only 12 items are visible at a time. As far as I can see, there is no way to go back to the Office 2010 behavior, or to increase the number of emails shown.- however, the "Options" menus are the same old ones, so they would be pretty difficult to use on a touch device.- after producing countless versions of Outlook, the grouping of messages into conversations is as bad as always. Furthermore, the conversation replies are less visible in 2013 than they were in 2010. Clicking on messages in a conversation makes the message list jump to the most random places.- I keep my messages sorted with newest on the bottom. Often, I find the message list jumping to the uppermost (oldest) message, without selecting (and displaying) it.- haven't found how to disable the weather calendar embedded in the calendar.+ I really like the "in place" reply.+ better display of multiple calendars.+ search seems faster

Excel:- the animations of the cursor when jumping from one cell to the other can be very distracting when quickly inputting text and using Enter and TAB.

That's about it (until now).Since I don't use the Metro interface, I can't comment on integration there. Nor will I integrate my work computer with my social accounts. SkyDrive integration looks nice, but I don't have an account there; plus my company's security policy would prohibit synchronizing to outside sources.

Overall, the feeling is the same as previous Office releases; maybe a little faster, but I don't know if this is because of Office or Windows.

There are many really good improvements in Outlook 2013, but one I'm really struggling with: I know Win8 moved to monochrome subpixel smoothing instead of RGB subpixel smoothing as part of the whole tablets-with-rotating-screens transition (where you no longer know exactly where the RGB pixels are located).

But Outlook 2013 editor now comes with it's own subpixel smoothing setting (under editor/advanced). At first I thought this would be great, because they could independently use RGB subpixel smoothing specifically for non-tablet displays. But sadly Outlook 2013 also seems to use monochrome (i.e. full pixel) smoothing... and that, in combination with the various default fonts inside Outlook 2013, results in a horrible aliased mess.

I'm running Outlook 2013 with Win8 on various non-tablet devices, but surprisingly the worst offender is a Dell 23" IPS screen. Turning off subpixel smoothing in Outlook 2013 seems to help somewhat (it still smooths, but I think it might then be using Win 8's cleartype settings instead of the Outlook ones), but I can't get it looking as smoothed as Windows UI fonts, let alone approaching the readability of Outlook 2010 under Win7 using older RGB subpixel Cleartype smoothing.

The stupid thing is Word and Excel 2013 are fine, as are the menus inside Outlook. It's just the Outlook editor as far as I can tell.

Question for you. Did you previously use HUP to get an older version of Office, and you're still at the same employer? I'm running into an issue were I used it last year to get Office on my Mac, and now want to get 2013 on my PC, but it only allows 1 purchase per person for life (at least, that's how I'm reading the verbage).

In the split second delay between clicking the X, and the Office 2013 window closing, the window acquires the standard Windows 8 titlebar and the window border. It doesn't do it every time. It doesn't even do it very often. But I have seen it, and thus know it is possible.

What do I need to hack in Office 2013 to make the window titlebar and window border permanent?

What's truly bizarre about Outlook 2013 not showing email results in Explorer is that it apparently disabled the same for Windows Live Mail just because I have Outlook 2013 installed - I haven't even configured it to hook up to my hotmail, but once installed Live Mail messages no longer show up in explorer search results either.

Really can't fathom the logic behind this, even for just not showing Outlook results in explorer. There are times where the only copy of a file I have may be as an email attachment, but may not know that when searching for it. Pretty much defeats the point of consolidated search results and having a preview pane in explorer.

Why on earth did they get rid of the picture manager? I use that a lot to just paste in photos, resize them, and then go on my way. I realize that there are some tools in Word, but they aren't easy to use, or as quick, as just pasting and resizing in Picture Manager.

If we make the switch to Office 2013, I see a definite need to either install the 2010 picture maanager, or go to some free third-party application.

I still have Office 2007 Enterprise. What would make me want to upgrade to 2013 (or even 2010)? Enterprise edition was very expensive, at least for me, so why would I spend that much money again? Is it really an upgrade, or, as I have heard, just a difference in layout mostly? I use Android for phone and tablet and have a Windows 7 laptop w/plenty of flash drives and memory, so I don't really need to use the cloud. Is there anything else that is actually functional that Office 2007 doesn't have, I don't just mean more convenient or that it looks better but actual functions.

My recollection is that 2007 has 90% of the actual functionality that 2013, and the 10% that's missing is new "nice to have" stuff. If money is no object, I'd recommend upgrading, but if you're on a budget, 2007 should have everything you need. IMO, they pretty much maxed out the capabilities of most of the core apps in 2007, and now they're just refining UI and tacking on superfluous features.

In the split second delay between clicking the X, and the Office 2013 window closing, the window acquires the standard Windows 8 titlebar and the window border. It doesn't do it every time. It doesn't even do it very often. But I have seen it, and thus know it is possible.

It doesn't really work that way; Windows will draw a border even for apps that drive their own non-client area if the app is unresponsive in certain ways. It doesn't mean that it's dropping back to some secret "standard appearance" mode, it just means that the operating system has got bored of waiting for it to draw.